Medicare paid for medicines that three other wealthy nations decided had little value
As the U.S. grapples with rising prices for medicines, a new analysis finds Medicare spent more than $26 billion in recent years on dozens of medicines that were not recommended for coverage in three other wealthy nations because government advisory groups there found the drugs did not have sufficient value to justify the costs.
The researchers identified a total of 134 medicines that were approved by the Food and Drug Administration prior to 2016 but were not endorsed by agencies in Australia, Canada, and the U.K. that conduct so-called health technology assessments, according to the study in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
